Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Going Crazy and Getting Better Again, published by Evenstar on July 2, 2023 on LessWrong.

[Epistemic status: Processing after a long period of work and recovery, which is not yet over]

Background

Four years ago, I was in university. I was a casual rationalist, having been introduced by HPMOR, been active on rationalist tumblr, and then joined a loosely allied fiction writing community known as Glowfic. Things seemed pretty okay. I had known for a while that I was not neurotypical, having been diagnosed with ADD in high school and also having been in a gifted program.

I was also familiar, casually, with weird things happening to me and people around me. I was active in the hypnosis scene recreationally, and was fascinated by how people transformed under the influence of trance. I am also trans, and thus had experienced a major identity shift from my "cis male" self to a transfeminine identity.

That feminine identity was based on a female roleplay character that I had played as obsessively for several years - not an uncommon occurrence in trans people. She talked to me in my head - not an uncommon occurrence for authors. Eventually I decided I'd be her because she was cooler than my (dysphoric, beaten-down) self. And so we went on in a new identity, changing from our deadname to our new name. There was an attempt at coming out which... did not go well. I'll spare the details. I ended up closeted and under great stress to finish my degree.

I reached out to writing as my source of comfort, as I always had. I poured my hurt out into a newly-turned girl being abused by her vampiric sire. I started getting feelings and emotions from her - a sense of attraction to gothic and old-style clothing, a distinct fondness for lists and checkboxes. It was useful to me to like lists and checkboxes - after all, I was failing my degree from ADD - so I encouraged the persona, using a half-understood concept of Internal Family Systems and my experience with altered states achieved under hypnosis to try and develop the identity.

It worked! And we remain plural to this day, with a dozen or so other identities we've developed over time. We use these identities as different lenses to view the world through, ways of helping us not get too attached to any particular identity. We took the prescription to be a fox and not a hedgehog very seriously to heart. As far as we can tell this is both stable and useful; it's not what this post is about. It's simply necessary background so you can understand the level of weirdness in our life at this time.

So, here we were, trying to succeed at university, feeling like we didn't have enough willpower to manage to apply ourselves to our studies. And we had previous experience with Applying Weird Shit To Get Things Done.

So when we heard about Mastering The Core Teachings of The Buddha (which I will refrain from linking) we were interested. There was supposedly a way to gain better control over your emotions and thoughts that had been theoretically refined for a long period of time and had been studied at least a little by mainstream science! Medication didn't seem to work, so with a can-do attitude we set out to do some brainhacking.

In short, we got got.

The Psychosis

It is somewhat unclear, looking back now four years after my admission to hospital for acute psychosis, whether the meditation practices caused the altered states or whether the altered states caused the meditation practices. Certainly I had experienced many strange things in my life previously that are easily attributed to a schizotypal brain. Even before I picked up a religious bent and started fixating on ritual actions, I was having mood swings and feelings of distrust. What I can say for certain is that the ritual actions gave an excuse for me to experience all kinds of strange things, an...